By Priyanka Nair
The big winners among Indian entries at this year’s Cannes Lions are campaigns that address important social issues, and tell stories that tug at the heartstrings. However, is the fraternity relying on sympathy votes for wins through social awareness advertising? Or is this just the flavour of the season globally?
We’re a country that struggles to deal with teething socioeconomic issues that have been around since our Independence, every day. But there’s one thing that’s worth patting our own backs for—our willingness to come together and come up with do-able solutions.
Over the years, corporates and brands too have openly extended a helping hand through social awareness advertising. They partner with agencies to not just voice against these issues but also get the support of their target audience. The campaigns they design, ensure that real-life characters and situations are portrayed—a stunning example being this year’s big winner for India, the ‘Farmer Suicides’ campaign by Taproot India, which won four Lions in various categories.
Many such pieces of work have been recognised at various global forums, including the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It helps that brands today genuinely want to make a difference and ad agencies willingly put their heart and soul in to designing such campaigns. This is because such campaigns add good flavour to their work, but more importantly, even though the problem is local, the message is globally relevant. “Critical societal issues are becoming topics of discussion across the globe, because of such social awareness campaigns,” says KV Sridhar, Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett India & Subcontinent. “It is not just India but the world at large is using this to reach out to people. At times, it is about bringing out the changing human values in a manner that’s convincing through these works.”
But in the process, with social awareness advertising, is the Indian advertising fraternity relying on sympathy votes for wins at global award forums such as Cannes Lions? Or is this just the flavour of the season across the globe? Is storytelling the way to win big awards? Or are brands looking at much more from these kinds of communications?
The magic is really in the storytelling
Last year at Cannes, Indian contingents shouted ‘I Am Mumbai’ when the campaign for the newspaper Mumbai Mirror bagged a gold Lion in the Film Craft category. Created by Taproot India, again, and filmed by Abhinay Deo of Ramesh Deo Productions, the film featured vignettes of individuals staging angry protests in different parts of the city of Mumbai. Interestingly enough, each of these was based on actual stories published in Mumbai Mirror.
Apart from winning a Gold Lion, this campaign attracted a lot of attention after it was presented by Josy Paul, chairman and Chief Creative Officer, BBDO, at a seminar at Cannes. Paul revealed that as a fellow Indian, he was moved by the initiative. After this, the film was pretty much one of the most discussed campaigns at the festival. Such is the power of storytelling in advertising.
Shubhranshu Singh, Marketing Director, India & South Asia, Visa, shares some interesting observations about why such campaigns create a huge impact. He believes that the message in Cannes is about the system of storytelling. Every facet must resonate and amplify the core message. “India is a nation where one fifth of humanity is on the move to a better tomorrow,” he adds. “There are enormous barriers; so we recognize the roadblocks and take note of the challenges. Naturally, there can be no meaning to the communication, leave alone emotion, without a reference to context. It’s only seeing India with real eyes leading to genuine consumer truths, not ‘pathos injecting’ artificiality. Hence, we find relevant issues being picked up. I did it for the Visa debit campaign, ‘Dream To Advance’. It has to be done with boldness, simplicity and authenticity fulfilling a purpose.”
On the other hand, Ashok Lalla, Global Head, Digital Marketing, Infosys, believes that although there are many “worthy” Indian campaigns with a social angle, most don’t make the awards cut, as they are not as well-packaged as some international campaigns. “Why just Indian campaigns... globally campaigns with a ‘social’ side seem to resonate with audiences and award juries alike.” Santosh Padhi, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder, Taproot also has a similar opinion.“Consumers are bored if you talk about product features and benefits all the time. Communication needs to be more human if you actually want to connect with your consumer. Some brands like Tata, idea have already been doing that very successfully; brands genuinely need to look at greater goods to connect with consumers today.”
Honesty is the best strategy
This year Publicis Communications’ ‘Adopt a Pothole’ campaign for Apollo Tyres fetched a Silver Lion in the PR category. It all started with a problem – the potholes that plague most city roads. The brand took a unique approach by starting an online campaign about clearing potholes. The campaign made people change their attitude towards potholes – instead of viewing them as someone else’s responsibility, it encouraged people to be proactive in solving this problem. The brand projected potholes as ‘homeless pets’ that need to be taken care of. The outcome? 3.9 million impressions, 6,000 likes on the Facebook page and a click to conversion ratio of 61.5%, in just the first three weeks of the campaign.
It is necessary for brands to be honest in their communication. If a brand takes on a social issue, it should ensure it does justice to it and make a difference too. “Sometimes there is genuinely good work around campaigns that have a social message,” says Ashish Bhasin, Chairman India and Chief Executive Officer, South East Asia, Aegis Group. “This is often because there is a lot more freedom of creative expression and there are less restrictive clients in this area. However, in some cases, it has become fashionable to play up the sympathy card, coming from a developing nation, in international awards festivals. As a jury member you are sometimes amused to see work that is clearly in that area. One also has to be careful because the art of semi-legitimate scamming has been perfected and finetuned by some of the agencies in India.”
All’s well when the story ends well
Indian advertising has come a long way. Today, we have creative work winning big at Cannes Lions. But the question is, are we doing really well if compared to the other emerging countries? According to Singh, that seems to be the case. “Surely, it could and should do better, but it will be incorrect to assume it is struggling to keep at par with other emerging countries,” he says. “We should derive inspiration from wherever it may come for example Brazil, China, Mexico and many others are putting up a country or an industry face at Cannes. We should do so too. Advertising is an industry and its players are in business. This business is being run by large global conglomerates. They are publicly listed. Hence country specific intent is only relevant to a degree. Country specific content is perhaps where the magic lies.”
Change is something that one always looks forward in life. Brands today are looking to humanise conversations because at the end of the day, the consumer is the best judge. If a brand’s philosophy hits the right chord, the consumer will be the first one to stand up to promote it even further. Magic, thereby, will continue to happen when brands and agencies keep their thinking cap on at all times and honestly move ahead to get better.
EXPERT OBSERVATIONS
We need more imagination in the Outdoors
This year at Cannes, five entries grabbed Lions in the Outdoor category, mainly because of their craft and design and their representation of big brands. However, Prathap Suthan, Chief Creative Officer and Managing Partner, Bang in the Middle, who was also a jury member in this category, believes that we need to think less “western”. “First off, most of our work was still traditional outdoor,” he adds. “Barring one winner, nothing really jumped up and smacked anyone. Nothing redefined the space or the definition of Outdoor and Out-Of- Home. I also think the more western and more global we make our work; the lesser will be our chances of breakthrough. We kind of disappear into a pretty much equal space. I also think we should do more work that actually comes alive at a human level as well. A lot of work that got shortlisted from around the world dealt with some serious issues, scale, depth, and generated real empathy.”
Real PR work should come from specialised agencies
All three PR Lions won by India were entries submitted by mainline agencies, and not by the PR firms themselves. While the award wins mean a big deal, wouldn’t it be great to see the PR industry bringing world-class work to the fore? “Globally, PR is understood in a very different manner; it’s one of most evolved aspect in the business of marketing in the West,” says Anil Nair, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner at Law & Kenneth, India. “A PR activity brings in a positive momentum in the business of a brand and it goes beyond press relations. What is happening in India is that mainline advertising agencies are considering PR as another category to bet on. Brands should ideally bring together advertising and PR agencies at various levels of communications to design mature work.”
To be Cyber kings, we need better stories
Once again, India didn’t get through the Cyber Lions category even at the shortlist level. Carlton D’Silva, Chief Creative Officer, Hungama Digital Services, India, who was also a jury member in the category, believes that our work should focus more on the story and finesse in social media strategies. “We need to look at the Oreo campaign and the Intel ‘Beauty Inside’ campaign that won Grand Prix this year, as examples. I do believe we need to concentrate on storytelling and swiftness in social media activations, which would in turn also mean giving a fair bit of leeway to the agencies. That is a difficult decision for brand marketers.”
Feedback: priyanka.nair@exchange4media.com
